244 REVIEWS OF BOOKS April nature — and seeking in the influence of the heavenly bodies the explanation of all that befalls human beings, including their voluntary actions and moral character. He is apt to treat any statement of the former position as a concession to the latter. But, in the first place, it is possible to hold that the principles on which events in the physical world are predicted by men of science are inadequate to explain all human actions without affirming that these are wholly independent of physical conditions and limitations ; and, in the second place, even, for a rigid determinist there would surely remain a considerable distinction between the * astronomical ' and ' astrological ' ways of regarding the relation of the heavenly bodies to individual human beings (although, no doubt, the same person may, like Ptolemy, regard them in both ways at once) ; nor was there anything necessarily inconsistent or half-hearted, even before the supersession of the Ptolemaic by the Copernican system, in a refusal to combine them. I venture to think also that Mr. Wedel does not distinguish with sufficient clearness (see pp. 82 and 155, n. 1) between the belief that diviners cheated men's senses by diabolical illusion and ' the more modern sceptical view that the whole thing is humbug '. The man who had the special skill which enabled him to manipulate the forces of the spirit world was not on the level of a mere trickster dealing in sleight of hand or the like, however unlawful his art or unworthy the use he made of it. I am personally grateful to Mr. Wedel for his suggestion on p. 38 of an explanation of the reference to Plotinus in John of Salisbury's Policraticus, ii. 19 ; but is not the Macrobius passage intended Somn. Scip. i. 19 § 27 (not § 8) ? And should not the reference to Vincent of Beauvais's Speculum naturale on p. 65, n. 1, be iii. 39 (not iv. 34) ? Mr. Wedel does not, by the way, tell us what the edition of Vincent was which he found in the New York Public Library. I think that the statement on p. 60 that John of Salisbury ' was quite oblivious of the new learning which had already crossed the borders of Spain ' is too strong in view of the interesting remark in Metalogicon, iv. 6, about the countries in which de- monstrative science, such as Aristotle had in view in his Analytics, was still pursued. It is true that this passage does not suggest that this kind of learning had yet ' passed the borders of Spain ' ; but at least he knew of its existence in that country and in the other lands where the Arabian culture then prevailed. On p. 126 Mr. Wedel tells the story of Hippocrates and the physiognomist from the Secretum Secretorum without noticing that it was originally told of Socrates. Greenhjll in the article on Hippocrates in Smith's Dictionary of Classical Biography has given a satisfactory explanation of its transference to Hippocrates by the Arabians and of the appearance of
- ' Philemon ' in their version of the tale. C. C. J. Webb.
Codice Diplomatico del Monastero di San Colombano di Bobbio fino al- V Anno MCCVIII. A cura di Carlo Cipolla e Giulio Buzzi. (Fonti per la Storia d'ltalia, 52-4.) Three volumes. (Rome : Instituto Storico Italiano, 1918.) The preface to this collection of the charters and records of the abbey of Bobbio is dated 1908, but not much more than half the first volume was
